


In The Absence of Induration

by coruscantguard (nadiavandyne), nadiavandyne



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Clone Trooper-Typical Identity Issues, Comfort, Cuddles, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort Bingo 2020, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Mentioned Clone Commander Blackout, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Touch-Starved Clone Troopers (Star Wars), Whumptober 2020, cuddling with your vod aka punching each other but like. nicely., re. training on Kamino & shitty Coruscanti citizens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26789212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadiavandyne/pseuds/coruscantguard, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadiavandyne/pseuds/nadiavandyne
Summary: They’re clones, they’re born and bred soldiers. Weapons down to the bone. Natborns just don’t… understand.Violence is always going to be the language they understand best.
Relationships: CC-1010 | Fox & Clone Commander Thorn
Comments: 7
Kudos: 90
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	In The Absence of Induration

Thorn is halfway through getting up off of Fox’s bunk to go dump the datapads on the Commander’s desk when a hand catches his wrist.

He flinches, and it’s instinctive, reactionary,  _ violent _ . It’s a damn good thing that the hand loosens its grip immediately, as if it hadn’t, it’s owner would’ve met a face full of datapads. 

“Manda kriffing hells, Fox, really?”

“Sit the kark back down, shabuir,” Fox snaps, with all of his usual tact. 

“I’m just putting the datapads on your desk so you don’t decide to do them in the middle of the night,” Thorn replies placatingly, and he tries to tug his wrist out of Fox’s grip again. Fails. In his defense, he's tired. “Fox.”

“You have a broken leg, sit the kark down,” Fox snaps, breaking out the  _ Commander  _ voice this time, and that’s surprising enough that he doesn’t even fight back when Fox kicks his knee on his unbroken leg out from under him, even though the impulse is there.

He falls on the bed with a thump, and unceremoniously drops the datapads on the ground. “Seriously?”

“Sorry, do you  _ want  _ me to call Naat and tell her that you’re ignoring her instructions? Because I have no problem with ratting you out. I’ll take great joy in it, actually.”

Thorn glares at him. Fox looks back mildly, face pleasant. 

Force. In his months away, he’d forgotten how  _ infuriating  _ that expression was.

“Listen, I’m just gonna--”

“No, you’re not,” Fox interrupts, and tackles him fully onto the bunk.

“Oh, kriff you,” Thorn says, but he sinks into the violent embrace anyway, getting in a hit to Fox’s ribs that makes him curse. Thorn grins at that, barely managing to avoid the elbow Fox throws his way, and catches his arm, pinning it.

(And they’re clones, they’re born and bred soldiers. Weapons down to the bone. Natborns just don’t… understand. 

Violence is always going to be the language they understand best.)

Fox doesn’t try to get out of the pin, though, and his hands are insistent in their cling even though a punch had probably been his goal just moments before, and Thorn makes a mental note to prioritize looking into what happened when he was away. Despite how obviously touch-starved as he is, Fox very rarely allows himself the luxury of being anything even approaching the realm of needy. To have him clinging to Thorn's side like a cephalopod is worrying, even if Thorn admittedly doesn't mind the contact. 

But...

“I really should go back to my bunk,” Thorn says, and pokes the back of Fox’s neck, squirming halfway out of his grip. In response, Fox kicks him in the shin. “Hey!”

“Lie the kark back down, kriffer. Naat will kill me if I let you go back to your bunk.”

“No, she won’t,” Thorn says, rolling his eyes. “For some goddamn reason she actually likes you.” 

Fox physically rolls over to face the wall in response, because he’s a dramatic bastard. “Yeah, that’s why she’ll grant me the mercy of death instead of prolonging the torture,” he says dryly, “now, stay. Sleep. That’s an order, Commander.”

Kriff.  _ Kriff _ . He wants to, but...

If there's anything the last few months of back-to-back escort missions has made Thorn acutely aware of, it's his own destructive potential. Even without Hammer, he can cause damage. He’s a CC. Causing damage is his entire purpose. It’s literally in his blood. 

(And he’s not-- he’s not talking about the affectionate controlled fights, here. This is a wild kind of destruction, uncontrollable, like a Kamino typhoon, brought upon by specific memories, sensations, dates, feelings.)

In hindsight he knows that he was extremely lucky that it was Senator Amidala who woke him up during his last mission. Senator Amidala is kind, and merciful, and apparently knows exactly how to dodge when waking someone up who's still trapped in the throes of a nightmare, and Thorn is never ever telling Fox about that incident, because Fox's fear tends to manifest as lectures on tactics where he's citing regulations, and Fox only cites regulations when he's either justifying a dubious course of action to a superior officer, or scared out of his goddamn mind and grasping at straws.

"That… might not be the best idea," Thorn says. He hates to turn Fox away on the rare occasion that he actually  _ asks _ for something, but he'd hate to hurt him more. "The anniversary of, well, you know, is coming up, and recently I've been—"  _ twitchy, jumpy, unpleasant, vaguely murderous to the point that Thire has started making snide comments comparing me to you which is hypocritical as hell considering that it’s  _ **_Thire_ ** _ saying that, _ "—off. I've been off."

Fox doesn't say anything in reply, but his silence feels unimpressed anyway. Thorn sighs. "Briar woke me up the other day by poking me with butt of Jek’s sniper rifle, and I managed to get in a damn good punch before I realized where I was. She was literally holding a gun-- turned on stun, don’t give me that look-- and standing a full fifty inches away, and I still managed to break her nose. Sleeping in the same bed as someone else is not a good idea right now."

Fox is quiet for a moment, but then he rolls over, punches Thorn’s arm, then collapses on him, going limp and pinning him to the bed. Thorn wheezes as his still-bruised ribs protest, and Fox headbutts his chin as an apology, says, “I know when people are going to hurt me, Thorn.” A pause, then: “You won’t.”

Kriff. There’s a bone-deep certainty there, and it’s one Thorn can’t argue with. It’s like by saying the words Fox has spoken it into existence, created a guarantee that Thorn can trust, made it so that he physically  _ can’t  _ hurt him. He says it the same way he’d say  _ Kamino is an ocean planet _ , or  _ the clones were made for the Jedi _ \-- like it’s an undeniable fact, like there’s no argument to be had because it’s simply the truth. 

And trusting Fox comes as natural as breathing does at this point, but seeing how that trust is completely and unconditionally returned feels uncomfortable in a way that Thorn doesn’t want to examine, so. Time to change the subject. “Are you  _ trying  _ to break my ribs, osikovid?”

Fox snorts. “Not my fault that you have weak bones.” 

“We have the same bones, di’kut.”

“That’s what the Chancellor wants you to think.”

Thorn blinks. Blinks again. “How much sleep have you gotten in the last week?”

“How much have  _ you  _ gotten?” Fox asks, and his voice is soft, but there’s a thread of steel woven into it, a hint of beskar-clad spine in the pointed nature of his question, even as he somehow manages to simultaneously entwine himself further into Thorn’s side. It reminds Thorn vividly, almost violently, of when he was a cadet and Blackout would do the same, and he has to force himself to breathe through the instinctive panic that thinking about his batchmate always brings. 

Blackout is smart, and strong, and he’s got the best luck out of any vod. He's in special ops because he's one of the best. He’ll be fine.

He has to be fine.

Anyway, Blackout’s grip as a cadet tended to be looser, probably because he wasn’t dealing with fifteen layers of repression and touch starvation, but the weight of Fox’s body feels the same and that realization sits heavy on his chest. “Touché,” he says, and Fox mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like  _ knew it  _ into his blacks.

Thorn sighs, and he tries to muffle the yawn that follows it. Fails.

"Go to sleep, di'kut," Fox says, because he's kriffing omniscient or some other osik, and Thorn really shouldn't, but--

Maybe he can just close his eyes for a moment or two.

**Author's Note:**

> \- osikovid: shit + head in Mando'a. This is probably not the right way to form that insult, but I'm very tired and have given up, oops. Mando'a experts out there, feel free to correct me in the comments!
> 
> \- Briar and Naat are two of my Coruscant Guard OCs! They're both trans women, both use she/her, and Naat is the Guard's Chief Medical Officer, while Briar is the Guard's... Briar. Idk, lol, she does become an ARC Trooper at some point, but this fic happens before that, and I'm still fleshing out her backstory. 
> 
> \- Speaking of Briar, thank you to MageOfCole for giving me the idea to have Briar poke Thorn with a sniper rifle to wake him up!
> 
> \- Come talk to me on Tumblr [@coruscantguard!](https://coruscantguard.tumblr.com/)


End file.
